The horror of book burnings does not come from an immediate injury done by the violation of a material object, but through the display of intent that it conveys: the annihilation of plurality, dissent, imagination – and in the last consequence of those who dissent, who imagine. As the Romantic poet Heinrich Heine commented in his play Toleranzstück – indirectly referring to the burning of books by German nationalist students 1817 on the Wartburg:

“This was only an prelude. Where one burns books / In the end one well burn men as well.”